Startup news and updates: daily roundup (March 6, 2021)

Neobanks set to take fintech to the next level, says Razorpay Co-founder (Future of Work)

The time to go beyond just digital payments is here, and 2021 could well be the marker for a new financial world where the lines between banking and technology become increasingly blurred, said Shashank Kumar, Co-founder of Razorpay, on the sidelines of YourStory’s Future of Work event, the country’s biggest design and product diaspora.

Founders of Classplus and Rooter weigh in on content creation in a post-pandemic world (Future of Work)

At Future of Work 2021, YourStory's flagship product-design-tech conference, Mukul Rustagi, Co-founder and CEO of Classplus, and Piyush Kumar, Founder and CEO of Rooter Sports Technologies, shared key insights on creating, distributing, and monetising content in education and gaming, respectively. Content matters because "our culture is built around content, and Indians are gluttons for content", Piyush says. "The new internet user's first point of contact on the web is content."

Tata Technologies’ Warren Harris stresses on these 4 pillars to build a healthy organisation (Future of Work)

“Culture and people management are very much a science that can be practiced. It is much a management philosophy that can be measured in the same way that tangible things inside a business can be driven,” said Warren Harris, CEO, Managing Tata Technologies, on Day 2 of YourStory’s Future of Work 2021 summit. In his keynote, he emphasised on finding “the right balance between culture, management, morale, and remote working.”

Tech and innovation will power OYO’s resurgence in 2021, says Global COO Abhinav Sinha (Future of Work)

If 2020 was difficult for one industry, it was hospitality, but homegrown hospitality unicorn OYO used it to accelerate its product and technology because “as they say, never let a good crisis go waste”, said Abhinav Sinha, Global COO and Chief Product Officer of OYO Hotels & Homes during a fireside chat on Day 2 of one of India’s biggest product and design conferences, YourStory’s Future of Work. 

Titan Company’s Head of Analytics and Insights sheds light on the importance of personalisation at scale (Future of Work)

Today, customers are bombarded with a deluge of content from multiple brands, at multiple channels, and on multiple platforms. According to an Accenture survey, 91 percent of consumers say they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them. For marketers to cut through the clutter, they need to be relevant and engage with the customers. “One of the ways to achieve that is by personalisation,” says Yashwanth Kumar, Head - Analytics and Insights, Titan Company Ltd. 

Context, user experience key to leveraging AR/VR (Future of Work)

The key to creating impactful virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences on the web lies in building a context, keeping it realistic, and focusing on the user experience, three experts from a Bengaluru-based AR and VR startup said at YourStory’s Future of Work Summit on Friday. Sahil Singh, Shreya Pidikiti, and Pradyumna Panikker from AutoVRse explained how companies can leverage the two technologies, during their masterclass, “How to build impactful VR/AR experiences on the web” on Day 1 of the fourth edition of the two-day summit.

Government "not closing its mind" towards experimenting with crypto: FM Nirmala Sitharaman

With the government planning to introduce a Bill in Parliament to ban companies and individuals from dealing in cryptocurrencies, FM Nirmala Sitharaman said the government is not closing its mind towards "experimenting in the cryptocurrency world" and that a "very calibrated approach" will be taken. "A lot of mixed messages are coming from across the world. The world is moving fast with technology, and we cannot pretend we don't want it. We are not closing our minds. We are certainly looking at ways in which experimentations can happen in the digital world, including cryptocurrency," she said.

Elon Musk trolls rival US auto giants, Ford CEO responds

Billionaire tycoon Elon Musk is back in the news once again because of his adventures on social media. The CEO of electric car maker on Thursday said on Twitter that Tesla and Ford are the only two American carmakers not to have gone bankrupt out of thousands of car startups. Ford CEO Jim Farley responded to this tweet with a one-word acknowledgement: “Respect”.

Front passenger airbags to be mandatory in cars from April 1: Govt

The Indian government continues to further beef up its stance to make Indian roads safer. The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways, in a gazette notification, has made it mandatory for cars to have a front passenger airbag. According to the notification, new car models launched after April 1, 2021, will have to be fitted with a front passenger airbag. Existing car models already on sale will have to be fitted with a front passenger airbag from August 31, 2021.